Tom Bojko - The Japan Times

CULTURE / Music

Nov 20, 2002

The Willem Breuker Kollektief is a 10-piece jazz ensemble of mad Dutch that will stop at nothing -- not even onstage nudity -- to entertain themselves and their audience.

CULTURE / Music

Nov 6, 2002

Lemper takes lyrical leap

NEW YORK -- "I don't find inspiration in harmony, but in the darker corners of life," says actress and cabaret singer Ute Lemper at her home in New York City, where I caught up with her last week. On Nov. 9, she will be singing at the Akasaka Act Theatre in Tokyo, which will be the entertainer's fourth performance in Japan.

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Nov 6, 2002

Orchestra Baobab: "Specialist in All Styles"

No matter how good "Specialist in All Styles" sounds -- and it sounds very good -- perhaps nothing can compete with "Pirates Choice," Orchestra Baobab's treasure chest of Afro-Cuban cool that was recorded in 1982 and reissued earlier this year. Recorded live in the studio with no overdubs, "Pirates Choice" epitomizes the glory of spontaneity and analog technology -- on each tune the guitar, bass, drums, sax and vocals bleed into each other much as their Cuban influences meld with their West African foundations. It was the extraordinary popularity of this reissue that prompted the orchestra to reunite and record "Specialist."

CULTURE / Music

Oct 20, 2002

Okinawan music's healing embrace

"I've always felt that my role in life is to heal people through my music," says Yuriko Ganeko, a 54-year-old Okinawan singer and sanshin player. Ganeko, who favors purple eye shadow, heavy perfume and hoop earrings, was recently in Tokyo to promote her newest album, "Uta Asobi (Song Play)."

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Oct 17, 2002

Tisziji Munoz: "Shaman-Bala"

"I've always known music as a way of spontaneously expressing free heart feeling," says guitarist and metaphysical theorist Tisziji Munoz in an e-mail from his home in upstate New York. "Playing music as a broken or wounded heart is a constant characteristic of my heart feeling, or Soul, as some call it."

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Oct 2, 2002

John Zorn: "Film Works XII"

John Zorn is not afraid of saturating the market with his film scores -- nor should he be; on each new release, the composer invites us into yet another exquisite little world. "Film Works XII" presents the scores to three documentary films and the music is as varied as the films themselves.

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Sep 25, 2002

Laurel Aitken

In 1962, Jamaica achieved independence from Great Britain and the cocky, joyous feel of ska soon sprang up to embody the exuberance of the tiny island. Sadly, Jamaica's early expectations for independence were soon soured by poverty, violence and corruption. Reflecting the mood of the island, ska, too, soon gave way to the slower, rhythms of rock steady and reggae -- forms of music with more space for singers to express the disaffection of the people.

CULTURE / Music

Sep 22, 2002

The man's on FAAAY-YA!

"It was only four tracks on the machine," Jamaican music legend Lee "Scratch" Perry once said of an early mixing board, "but I was picking up 20 from the extraterrestrial squad."

CULTURE / Music

Sep 4, 2002

No fear of flying

"There's no such thing as improvisation," the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia once said. "There's only composition. Only you do it quickly; you're composing on the spot."

CULTURE / Music

Sep 1, 2002

Rene Paulo takes a break from the hotel circuit

For the better part of five decades, Rene Paulo has made a steady living playing piano in hotel lounges in Honolulu, Las Vegas and Los Angeles -- but don't call him a lounge player. And don't ask him if Liberace was an influence.

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Aug 28, 2002

Amadou and Mariam: "Amadou and Mariam"

This album smokes. Amadou and Mariam play a rollicking, good-natured blend of bluesy R&B and Malian dance band music. Amadou sings and plays a seamless rhythm guitar and the occasional crackling lead, while Mariam sings in a voice of sweet fragility.

CULTURE / Music

Aug 21, 2002

Trance music: Taking it to the next level

When deep into the music at a trance party, most people dance a sort of mechanized primal stomp, working their arms like pistons and clomping their feet. Although these maneuvers may look awkward, they are a natural reaction to the music's rigidly 4/4 industrial-sounding beats, which, though sublime to the dancers, may sound to the untrained ear like anything from rotating chopper blades to the repetitive clatter of a machine shop. Atop these beats are layered morphing sonic curlicues of all sorts, and if the hard beats of trance music provide dancers with an anchor, the top end of the music can, under the right conditions, facilitate an intense psychedelic experience.

CULTURE / Music

Aug 21, 2002

Light My Fire festival to heat things up

Relaxing in a conference room crowded with shelves of CDs and a couple dozen bottles of Belgian beer, Shohachiro Haga recently explained how he chose the four acts for the Light My Fire world music festival. A middle-aged man wearing an enviably broken-in polo shirt, Haga says, "We can find the roots of the artists we bring here, and they have a strong identity, but at the same time [there is] some mixture with contemporary music and arts."

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Aug 14, 2002

Maharaja: "Maharaja"

Maharaja is a raucous troupe of singers, dancers and musicians -- men, women and a drag queen -- who hail from Rajasthan, an Indian state that abuts Pakistan. Rajasthan is dominated by the still, sandy might of the Thar Desert, and if you happened to find yourself shuffling through it, you would likely encounter, of all things, a fossilized seashell or two -- the Thar Desert was once underwater. Standing in this magical land and becoming slightly delirious with the shimmering heat, you might witness Maharaja suddenly appearing before you -- as colorful as the peacocks that wander the desert -- and when night fell and the stars came out, they would doubtless put on the show of a lifetime.

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Aug 7, 2002

Scientist at Work

The music of trumpeter Frank London could be characterized as a product of "Radical Jewish Culture," a term coined by John Zorn that refers to post-Holocaust generations of Jews discovering on their own terms the meaning of their faith. London has spent the past couple of decades at the ancient intersections of Jewish, Middle Eastern and African music, and on "Scientist at Work" he continues to revel at the crossroads, informed by a Downtown sensibility that is at times sonorous and at others jagged. Judging from London's music, Radical Jewish Culture is restless, intelligent and obsessively inclusive -- it is also hip and very funky.

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Jul 31, 2002

Tabla Beat Science: "Live in San Francisco"

On Aug. 12, 2001, Tabla Beat Science, a multinational collective of forward-thinking musicians founded by the tabla player Zakir Hussein and the bass player and producer Bill Laswell, played a free show in the Stern Grove section of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. For many of the 12,000 people who attended, the experience had the same mind-blowing effect as the park's other legendary concerts by, say, The Grateful Dead or Santana. To be sure, a live recording cannot replace the camaraderie of thousands of awed listeners, the fragrance and shade of Stern Grove's eucalyptus trees or the crisp, mild air of San Francisco. "Live in San Francisco" does, however, capture the incredible music created on that day.

CULTURE / Music

Jul 14, 2002

Olu Dara's bringing it all back home

Olu Dara has just finished his sound check at Club Quattro when he breaks into a grin and waves enthusiastically from behind his mike. An instant later, he's hopped off the stage, bounded across the floor and is proffering his hand, as eager for the interview as a school kid for recess.

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Jul 10, 2002

Seigen Ono: 'So Peaceful, Simple and Strong'

Last month, when Marc Ribot was playing Aoyama Cay, one of Seigen Ono's people proffered an advance copy of "So Peaceful, Simple and Strong" to him backstage, saying, "It's good, Marc. It's really good." Ribot, heavy-lidded with jet lag and fatigue from touring Europe, grimaced and dropped the disc onto a growing pile that included business cards, a few stray pages of sheet music and balled-up wads of clothing.

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Jul 3, 2002

Bill Frisell: 'The Willies'

Bill Frisell, who is ostensibly a jazz guitarist, has been poking around with other forms of traditional American music for long enough now that "The Willies," a collection mainly of bluegrass tunes, comes as no surprise. But as with anything Frisell lays his hands to, this album is not without its quirks. In his characteristic way, Frisell uses loads of deep, warm reverb, delays and loops, as well as modern chord voicings and phrasing to carry the music a long way from the mountains and front porches where it was born.

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Jun 26, 2002

Stanley Smith: 'In the Land of Dreams'

These whiskey-voiced songs of riverboats, New Orleans nights and past loves will speak to you like mellow old friends. None will blow you away the first time through, but many will replay themselves in your head long after you've turned the CD off.

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